Diorama History

The Origins of Dioramas

The term diorama has a long and varied history that is closely related to the development of museums in Europe and North America. The concept of the diorama as we know it today from numerous natural and cultural history museums, is a display comprising painted background, three-dimensional plants and foreground with models of humans or animals. They were popular in museums and exhibitions all over the world from the late 19th century on.[1]

The term diorama is not actually clearly defined. This might be related to the fact that it has undergone a radical change since it was initially used. The roots of the name are Greek: diá-, “through, across, by, over” and hórama, “view” - to look through something. The term describes an image to be viewed and refers to the characteristic of most dioramas that one looks through a window-like frame or theatrical proscenium which restricts the viewing angles and hides vanishing points. Dioramas aim to reproduce a scene as accurately as possible, with sophisticated use of optical laws and other technical means they create a perfect illusion of what is depicted to deceive the viewer.[2]

The word “diorama” was coined by Louis Daguerre and his partner Charles Marie Bouton. Daguerre worked as a stage designer at the Paris Opera and was famous for his impressive sunrise and sunset stage effects. Although Daguerre is better known for later being a pioneer of early photography, the two Frenchmen presented the first diorama to a Parisian public in July 1822. One of characteristics of these first diorama theatres is a mechanised, rotating auditorium. The diorama consist of two stages where huge paintings are presented. Rather than changing the paintings the audience was rotated, changing their viewing position to follow the spectacle.

The première featured images of the Sarnen Valley in the Unterwalden Canton of Switzerland on one side and the interior of the Trinity Chapel in Canterbury Cathedral on the other. The images were lit from behind by windows and from the front by lamps of different intensity. In this way, the pictures obtained an extraordinary depth. By changing the lighting in the front, using curtains behind and different coloured plates, the images were so cleverly illuminated that an impression of movement emerged within the static representation. This resolution of fixed image and the illusion of movement is an essential characteristic of Daguerre’s diorama.[3]

In the following years, the diorama’s popularity in Europe grew steadily. Just one year after the launch in Paris, Daguerre and Bouton opened a building in London. In 1827, Carl Wilhelm Gropius built a diorama in Berlin with the support of Karl Friedrich Schinkel, who designed the plans.[4]

Dioramas and Museums

Daguerre’s dioramas were never intended for the mediation of science but as a purely theatrical entertainment for a wide audience. At first sight this may seem at odds with the idea of the museum as an institution for research and instruction, knowledge and education. In fact the use of the term diorama in the evolution of museum displays remains inconsistent – both in the scientific literature as well as in contemporary literature.[5] The influences that Daguerre and Bouton’s invention had on the museum display are however, clearly visible and widespread. It is not the specific form or techniques that the first dioramas used but the effect that was adopted by museums: the intention was to create an illusion of as convincing a depiction of a specific ‘reality’. While the diorama initially came from the field of entertainment and art, it was increasingly used as a template for a spectacle much like a department store window display of products and mannequins, the window itself dividing inside and outside, creating an enclosed space of attraction. The museum visitor becomes a flâneur, walking past or stopping to look at the diorama. There is, however, no one formal definition of a museum diorama but rather a multitude of different forms.

The first dioramas in natural history museums depicted groups of animals and plants according to specific classifications and categories of species, geographic region or even specific communities of flora and fauna in a so-called ‘biological group’. These early dioramas gradually acquired objects with the intention of giving a realistic impression of the subject's natural habitat. This development resulted in the so-called ‘habitat diorama’.[6]

Stephen Quinn (2006) is describing this traditional ‘habitat diorama’ when he defines three core components of the diorama forming one image and one display: stuffed animals, a foreground of diverse flora and geological formations from their habitat and a curved, painted background, creating an illusion of space and wider context.​The introduction of the diorama in museums ran parallel to the development of modern exhibitions (see Bennett: 1996). As exhibitions developed, the idea of the contextualisation of the exhibits progressed - gradually dioramas became a useful tool for embedding objects in a realistic setting. The representation and production of a certain reality became more and more sophisticated. The detailed, carefully staged dioramas thereby show aspects of a world view that is inherent to the idea of the museum and is manifested by the diorama. The establishment of the bourgeois gaze (Bennett 2010) must therefore be considered in the context of this viewing regime inscribed in the construction of the diorama.